Thanks For All the Love
by murderofonerose
Summary: Ford returns to Earth to find Arthur in love with Fenchurch.


**Warning: **Implied past Ford/Arthur, so if you don't like slash… now you know that.**  
Word Count:** 1215  
**Disclaimer:** As I am not Douglas Adams, I own nothing.**  
Author Notes:** When I started writing this, ages ago, I intended it to go in a Ford/Arthur/Fenchurch direction. And it did, in a vaguely implied, very PG sort of way, which I am perfectly content with.

Anyway, I posed Hitchhiker fic on my birthday two years ago when I was just starting out writing fanfiction, so I figured I'd do it again this year. :)

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**Thanks For All the Love**

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It took Ford Prefect until approximately six thirty pm of the planet Earth's Greenwich Mean Time to well and truly pass out for the evening. He was helped along in this by space-lag, general exhaustion, and a once-full bottle of gin.

Fenchurch stood watching thoughtfully in the doorway to the sitting room as Arthur settled a blanket over the rumpled Betelgeusian and shoved an old pillow under his head to protect the couch cushions from inadvertent drooling.

"You did mention him in passing," she said, "two days ago."

She paused to glance around the sitting room, which looked as though it had recently played host to a small but excitable tornado – and this, considering the circumstances, would not be an entirely inaccurate way of describing things. In addition to the broken chair on the floor and the slightly damp broken chair trussed up on the table, the chaos included a small side table next to the sofa (now overturned and mysteriously missing one and a half legs), two glasses (broken and resting on wet patches of the carpet), and every picture frame in the room (no longer hanging straight on the wall but all angled a perfect thirty-seven degrees to the right).

"He seems like the kind of person who would merit more than just an 'in passing,'" Fenchurch concluded.

Arthur looked around as well, sighed, then took her hand and walked upstairs with her.

"I try not to think about it," he said when he felt absolutely certain that speaking above a whisper wouldn't somehow wake Ford from the deep sleep he'd fallen into and lead to more property damage.

"Why not?" Fenchurch asked patiently.

Arthur shrugged, his voice taking on a tone that silently voiced his annoyance at Ford for finishing off all the gin.

"I just… There's… things. It was a long time ago."

She stared patiently at him. Whatever it was, it sounded interesting, and she was prepared to wait all night to hear it if necessary.

"There's nothing to it now," Arthur added uneasily. "We had a disagreement, and yelled at each other for a bit, and then we parted ways. It really was," he insisted, "a long time ago."

"Arthur, sweetheart," said Fenchurch, "it's all right. You've been awfully quiet the past two days. I think now I can guess why… and it's all right."

"It is?"

"Yes."

She led him into the bedroom and sat him down on the edge of the bed. Her fingers came to rest gently just to either side of his shirt collar, and her dress swished quietly against the inner sides of his knees.

"You and Ford," she began simply, "have a history, don't you?"

"Er. Yes, you might say that…"

She kissed him. Then she said, "That's all right with me."

Some hours later, Arthur woke up lying on his side with an arm curled around Fenchurch in front of him, and wondering why someone was elbowing him in the back.

_Oh no,_ he thought.

"Oh no," he said out loud.

"Shove over a bit, will you?" whispered Ford. "There's not enough blanket over here."

Arthur shifted around – very carefully, trying not to wake Fenchurch – to give Ford a look in the darkened room. The look was meant to say something along the lines of, 'What do you think you're doing?' but in practice didn't seem able to make it much further than a plaintive, 'What do you want from me?'

"In case you were wondering," Ford told him, "I came up here because I thought it was ten past midnight. I've gotten out of practice, you see, with reading those analog clocks correctly, so I needed to have a look at your digital watch." He paused, for effect. "It's actually just two in the morning, though."

This struck Arthur as a particularly typical Ford thing to say: inconvenient, yet perfectly true and therefore difficult to win an argument over. He glanced pointedly at Fenchurch (who was, more or less, still asleep) and then back.

"Ford," he said quietly, "why are you here?"

"Grapefruit," replied Ford.

Arthur sighed. He knew that he would probably regret asking, but asked anyway.

"What's grapefruit got to do with anything?"

"It's very simple," explained Ford. "I keep having this reoccurring dream that I'm in New York explaining to something that life is like a grapefruit. Dimpled on the outside, squidgy on the inside, sometimes eaten for breakfast. Not by me, but some people. It's very disconcerting."

"What is, eating grapefruit?"

"No, the dream. Pay attention Arthur."

"I _am_ paying attention," Arthur hissed. "You're not answering my question, though."

Ford frowned, and stole Arthur's pillow. "Is that really necessary?"

"Yes, it is. Things can't just be like they were before, Ford. I told you this afternoon, I'm in love with Fenchurch. We're very happy together."

"What's _that_ got to do with anything?" Ford asked. "Scoot over a bit more, it's cold."

Arthur decided that he was too tired to get a headache, and rolled back onto his side and closed his eyes. He pressed his cheek against Fenchurch's hair and, when she shifted a tiny bit closer and pressed against his chest in her sleep, he felt a little better about things.

As big as he knew the Universe to be, she was his anchor in it. In spite of the decision to go out and find God's Final Message to His Creation, in spite, even, of Ford's sudden and jarring reappearance in his life and bedroom, she would keep him from going mad.

This thought was so reassuring that he fell back asleep within seconds, and didn't notice that Ford kept scooting a little bit closer.

Like most mornings in her lifetime, Fenchurch woke up. (She did, on occasion, sleep past noon or stay up very late, but on this particular morning neither of these was the case.) As usual, her morning routine began with scrunching her nose up cutely and yawning. The way her nightshirt bunched up as she stretched and rolled over in Arthur's arms was also rather familiar by now.

The head of curly ginger hair she could see just past Arthur's shoulder as she opened her eyes, however, was not.

Fenchurch blinked sleepily, not feeling too inclined to be bothered by this.

The arm Ford had thrown loosely over Arthur's waist did give her pause for a minute, though. She inspected it, calmly, and decided that one arm was not incriminating in itself.

She decided to wake him up anyway.

"Ford," whispered Fenchurch. She slipped out of Arthur's arms, sat up, and reached over him to tap the Betelgeusian on the shoulder. "Ford."

This didn't seem to accomplish very much, but she stubbornly kept at it until Ford half roused with a grumbled protest, tried to roll out of range, and fell off the bed.

"Huh?" Ford inquired of the carpet. "Ow," he added mildly.

Fenchurch checked to see that Arthur was still asleep. (He was.) Then she climbed out of bed, put on a spare pair of pajama bottoms under her nightshirt, and greeted Ford in the first way that came to mind.

"Good morning," she said. "Would you like some breakfast?"

It was barely six am. He considered it.

"Sure, okay," Ford said, yawning, and followed her downstairs.


End file.
